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Motorists entering Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue along Lakeshore Blvd. from the west might not notice Clifford Lincoln's historic two-storey home shielded behind a waist-high hedge. The former National Assembly member and federal parliamentarian and his wife, Jocelyn, have lived in this house with its stone façade and charming front and back porches for the past 12 years. The couple are the latest caretakers of a house older than Canadian Confederation, though renovations undertaken before and during their tenure added modern touches that have turned this 19th-century farmhouse into a comfy family abode.

Soon, someone else will be residing in the house and sharing in its heritage. The Lincolns are moving to a modern residence and have put their property up for rent.

"It breaks our heart, but we're getting older," Jocelyn said recently, citing the time and energy needed to maintain the sprawling back lawn with its huge century-old cottonwood tree - reputedly the biggest on the West Island - as well as the flower garden and its adjoining pond, an attractive feature that Jocelyn herself introduced.

"It makes a nice bubbling sound in the summer. You can go sit there and read quietly."

According to Architecture rurale, a guide to regional historic homes published in 1986 by Montreal's municipal government, it was in 1864 that farmer Antoine Héniau-Deschamps ordered a local master mason, only referred to as P. Martin, to build this stone house on the banks of Lac St-Louis. Martin's name can still be seen carved in the lintel above one of the rear porch windows.

An earlier house owned by Joachim Carrière had stood on the spot at least since 1818. Héniau-Deschamps apparently built his house on the existing foundation, erecting a cut stone façade with a gently sloping roof and two chimneys. The house was typical of regional homes in the second half of the 19th century.

Through his rear windows, Héniau-Deschamps could look out on to the lake and marvel at the play of light as storms swept across the sky or when the sun and moon shone on the water. His front windows overlooked a wide expanse of farmland.

Héniau-Deschamps's closest neighbours were a short distance down the road in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, the second-oldest community on the West Island, having established a parish in 1703. Artifacts from early settlers were still turning up in the mid-20th century on the back lawn of his house.

"As a boy, I used to dig in my father's garden," said John Bland, who grew up in the house when it was owned by his father, John Bland Sr., the distinguished head of McGill's School of Architecture from 1941 to 1972. "One time I found what I thought was a metal slug. It turned out to be a 1775 penny."

In 1880, Héniau-Des-champs's son, also Antoine, sold the land to Thomas A. Dawes. Twenty-seven years later, McGill University opened its Macdonald campus on the land, constructing its buildings within view of the house. In 1971, McGill leased part of the land to John Abbott College.

Even though changes to the house's exterior were made during the course of more than a century, the original design is still clearly visible. A long dormer was added later on each side of the roof, but it takes just a little imagination to envision the original twin dormer windows peeking from the curved, cedar-shingled roof. The biggest change came about 60 years ago when Bland Sr. built an addition to the side of the house. Today, the addition contains a modern kitchen linked by a narrow corridor to a small room at the other end that Clifford Lincoln has used as a book-lined study crammed with photos and mementos.

"We still call it 'the new addition,' " said John Jr., who has lived his adult life next door in a house designed by his father.

Despite additions and modern improvements, whiffs of rural 19th-century Quebec still swirl about the house in details like the bare wooden beams overhead in the basement and the turnkey door ringer and original latches on the front door. Bland Jr. recalled that when he was a boy, the old-fashioned latches on the bathroom doors came to serve an unintended purpose.

"We used to lock ourselves in by sticking two toothbrushes in the latch."

First-time visitors to the house inevitably remark on the low ceilings and doors - if they haven't already bumped their head upon entering through the front entrance. The living room ceiling is low enough that an average-sized man can touch it with his upraised hand. But in the adjoining dining room, which was once separated by a wall, the original pine floor slopes slightly down, which makes the ceiling a touch higher. Before the "new addition" was built, the kitchen was where the living room is today.

Upstairs, the doors and ceilings are lower still, especially entrances to the two modern bathrooms where even an average-sized man must slightly duck to enter. Jocelyn Lincoln smiled at the initiative of her real estate agent who sent a prospective tenant tall enough to play in the NBA.

A grand-scale bedroom with adjoining bathroom occupies one-half of the second floor, while the other half has two smaller bedrooms and closets at the top of the central staircase. The rear view takes in the lawn and much of the lake and its abundant wildlife in summer.

"Chickadees, lots of ducks, beavers, muskrats, at odd times grouse and, yes, skunks," Jocelyn said. "A raccoon was living under the house, but we got rid of him. I've seen turkey buzzards around here."

During the Blands' ownership, there were four bedrooms upstairs to accommodate the couple and their four children. John Jr. recalled that in winter his small, corner room was always the coldest, in part because "the windows were not very airtight."

Since then, the windows have been replaced and the heating has been modernized, but with an old-fashioned touch. The Lincolns scrapped the horizontal "macaroni noodle" radiators that were in place and put in more effective vertical radiators that a plumber had salvaged from some demolished older homes.

Originally, the house was not heated by steam heat, of course, but by a fireplace in the dining room and a cast-iron stove in the kitchen. The fireplace was in use as recently as the 1998 ice storm. The old-time farmers, Bland mused, certainly understood how to heat homes with wood.

"The fire heated up the stone walls all the way up the stairs," he recalled. "The sitting room was very comfortable, and (during the ice storm) we didn't need to use sleeping bags."

On the advice of firefighters, the Lincolns stopped using the dining room fireplace and also closed off the wall where a chimney had opened into the former kitchen. A decorative cast-iron stove, possibly original to the house, remains on display, a charming link to the past amid the Lincolns' comfy sofas, armchairs and artwork.

Closets were lacking in the original house, so subsequent owners have created their own storage spaces. John Bland Sr., for example, bought some doors from a period home in Old Montreal and used them for a series of adjoining closets or "coat cupboards" to the left of the main entrance. Underneath each door is a drawer for storing clothes.

A photo of the property is on the cover of Lincoln's memoirs, Towards New Horizons, published last December.

Rental arrangements for the property are being handled by real estate agent Mary Deskin, 514-944-3676.

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Stone abode in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue was built in 1864

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